There are reasons to question the choice of the commander of the Alaska National Guard as a prospective commander in chief (though there were equally serious reasons to doubt the military qualifications of another backwoods candidate, Abraham Lincoln, who served for a few months as a private and a captain in the Black Hawk War).

But instead of engaging this issue, liberals have been drawn, helpless and mesmerized — like beetles to the vivid, blue paradise of the bug zapper — toward criticizing Sarah Palin‘s religion. Palin’s former Pentecostal church is called a “shout-and-holler tabernacle.” Reporters press Palin’s former pastor to reveal if she has ever spoken in tongues, the way it was once asked if candidates had ever used drugs. Palin’s beliefs are compared to those of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — though it turns out that she was caught on tape requesting prayers for the success of her country instead of railing against it. In that sense, Palin sounds most like President Franklin Roosevelt, who prayed on D-Day that, “by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.”